The New Media Deal

I am headed up to westchester county this morning to participate in a panel discussion on "consumer behavior on the internet – behavioral targeting and lead generation". It’s an area I’ve written extensively on over the years but not much lately.

In thinking about the topic in the shower this morning, my mind latched onto this comment that Adrian left to my recent Facebook post:

Facebook doesn’t seem to have tried too hard yet to maximize the value
that they can get from ads. They know so much about me that they could
do as well or better than google with targeting; most of the ads shown are inane

Of course that is true. It’s the "new media deal" as Matt Blumberg coined the phrase in this post from August 2004.

The New Media deal is that … consumers are willing to
share a certain amount of personal information in exchange for even
better content, more personalized services, or even more targeted
marketing — again, as long as those things aren’t too intrusive and
provide adequate value.

The thing that is so interesting to me is that the Facebook generation doesn’t resist the new media deal for privacy concerns, they embrace it. They don’t fear the targetting, but they sure hate the "inane ads". I do too.

#VC & Technology